


First Snow on Brooklyn

by Cluegirl



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Angst, Christmas is hard for everyone, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Misunderstanding, holiday pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 00:55:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5519507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cluegirl/pseuds/Cluegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Christmas Eve, Captain Steven G Rogers makes his way back to Brooklyn, to say goodbye to a beloved ghost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by the Jethro Tull song of the same name. [First Snow on Brooklyn](https://youtu.be/21HDLF7OPCs). I took too long knocking it into shape, and so now I'm rush-posting it on Christmas Eve. I hope you like it, and if you do, I hope you'll tell me so.

* Dec 24 *

“Where to please?” the cab driver asked, not bothering to look back as Steve pulled the door closed and shook the snow from his coat.

“Brooklyn,” he answered, brushing at his shoulders. “President Street. You know where Saint Frances Xavier’s is?” 

At that the driver looked, eyebrow pointedly arched beneath the turban that marked him as Sikh. “Do you have an address, sir?”

“Not really,” Steve shrugged. “Just... I know it’s around 6th avenue, more or less.” 

In actuality, Steve knew exactly where the church was, as well as the names and general backgrounds of the teachers, administrators, and support staff who worked there. But it wasn’t any of the driver’s business that the church wasn't actually where Steve was going tonight, and if he'd wanted to answer questions about that, Steve would have just taken one of the Stark Industries fleet cars provided for the convenience of guests at the Christmas party he was now escaping.

The cabbie’s rearview look ripened somewhat, and he wordlessly gave Steve to understand that if he hadn’t been a white man in an expensive suit and good quality coat, they would have been going nowhere at all at eleven thirty at night on Christmas eve. However, given that the Midtown pickup address indicated the possibility of a very good tip for his troubles, he was willing to waive his quite natural and justified concerns, delay his lunch hour, and help this poor, benightened idiot play Marco Polo with his destination in a less-than-ideal borough.

It was a very eloquent look.

But then the cabbie shrugged, started the meter, and pulled the cab into traffic, windshield wipers smearing the delicate white flakes to mush as soon as they hit the glass. Relieved, Steve settled back into the cracked vinyl seat and waited for miles to pass.

The radio played something blandly seasonal and utterly forgettable, and Steve watched Manhattan crawl by the window; cars clogging the road even at this hour, people in party clothes and heavy coats cursing the congestion, piles of gifts and children tottering in back seats as they jousted for dominance on the slick road. 

All of New York seemed to be chasing paperboard notions of family cheer, peace on earth, and goodwill toward men with all the grim and savage determination of shoppers brawling for the last trendy doll on the shelf at Barney’s.

And here he was doing the same damned thing -- crushing the broken-off piece of his heart underfoot in the name of what? Sentimentality? Stubbornness? Christmas? He had to shake his head to keep from laughing at himself. _Always so dramatic._

“It’s the last time,” he reminded himself with a shiver. “Then after this, you’re done. It’ll be time to move on.”

As if in answer, the cabbie half turned in his seat. “You will be too late, sir.”

“I’m --” Steve choked, then tried again. “What did you say?”

“For the Mass,” the driver explained. “Forty minutes on a good night with no traffic. In weather like this...” he shook his head. “Even if I take the tunnel instead of the bridge it will be an hour at least.”

“I know,” Steve sighed as the lights up ahead turned a futile, gridlocked green. “It’s fine. There’s nobody really waiting for me anyway.” The cabbie turned the radio up then, and neither of them had any more to say until the car pulled up in front of the church an hour and a quarter later. 

People were beginning to trail out of the church doors; the early-leavers and once-yearly faithful wanting to miss the exiting crowd, and avoid having to shake hands with the priest on the way out. One or two clusters were eyeing the cab speculatively as Steve paid and got out, clearly gauging the cost of a fare home against the building snow on un-shoveled walks, and their best church shoes. 

Steve pulled his collar up, as much against recognition as the swirling wind, and stepped quickly out of their way.

It was a perfect snow for Christmas eve, really -- thick and fluffy flakes dancing madly through the almost-too-warm air, sketching swirls and ghosts on the city's negative spaces, dancing on updrafts before slipping down, exhausted, to rest. Goosedown white was piling up on every surface of Brooklyn, as if it could erase the sins of the world in one evening of crystalline white not savage enough to last. As if the same relentless grime of eleven million lives rubbing up against each other wouldn’t still be waiting underneath, grudging and patient and smug until the pretty fiction melted away again.

He should have loved this, Steve reflected sadly. It was the kind of Christmas card prettiness Brooklyn had but rarely gotten in Steve's life, both before and after he went into the ice -- benign and lovely and utterly charming without even the threat of a hard freeze behind it. Just two short weeks ago, Steve knew the storm would have had him thinking happily of cocoa by the fireplace, of skaters at Rockefeller center and his sketchbook, or depending on his mood, of smashing a big, fluffy snowball over the top of Tony Stark's head just to watch him sputter about how much his stylist cost.

But the Steve he'd been two weeks ago might as well have been two hundred years ago, because that Steve hadn't practically tripped over Bucky in his own backyard on a fine winter's day -- hadn't run headlong up against his own irrelevance to the person who had been his pole-star for as long as he could remember; hadn't smashed his own heart willfully to pieces before he'd even hit the ground.

* Dec 9 *

“No, Sam, it’s fine, really,” Steve had been saying, phone clamped between chin and shoulder as he juggled his coffee and wallet in one hand, and wrangled the shop door with the other. “Someone’s got to hold down the fort during the holiday weekend, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be me this time around.”

“No reason why it _has_ to be you either,” Sam had retorted knowingly. “Look, if you don’t want to come down to Virginia and get mobbed by the Wilson cousins, I get that. But I know Natasha invited you to go out to the farm with her and Wanda.”

Steve rolled his eyes, crushing himself to the side as a pair of trendy young parents with a twin strapped to each of them pushed past him from the snowy, bustling street. “Clint and Laura don’t really have all that much space for guests, you know. And anyway, Tony and Pepper are throwing a fancy do, and they wanted someone from the team to show up and gladhand.”

“Rhodes mentioned it,” Sam allowed. “Didn’t say you were planning on going though...”

“Tony wants me to drop in,” Steve answered truthfully, if not entirely honestly. “Said I might be slightly less awkward in front of his guests than the Vision, and at least the USO taught me how to smile and shake people’s hands.” 

“Yeah, tell that to someone who doesn’t know how much you hate that dog and pony nonsense,” Sam grumbled.

Steve cut him off with a smile that was more than half grimace as he finally threaded his way out to the street, where it seemed as if half of New York was rushing furiously along. “Dogs and ponies have to make a living too, you know," he said, pressing back against the wall to wait for an opening in the herd of people and packages, and plaid-jacketed kids just let out from classes at the school across the street. "Look, just tell your Nana that I’m grateful for the offer, but I can’t make it this year. Maybe another time.”

“I’m going to be getting the third degree about what you’re doing for the Holidays instead,” Sam replied, warning imminent in his voice. "And don't think I'll be able to lie and say you aren't sulking by yourself over battle plans and cold leftovers either, because this is my Nana we're talking about, Steve. Woman's got _skills_."

“I thought you said you were trained to resist torture, airman,” he responded, feeling his smile true up just a little. “You saying one harmless old woman can break you?”

"Harmless? Aw no, son, you did not just...!"

Listening to Sam sputter at that brought Steve’s almost-smile back into the realm of plausibility. Nothing like riling his wingman up to help Steve shake off a crappy mood -- it was even better, and quicker, as well, -- than disappearing into the too-cool-to-notice-Captain-America hipster crowds of Brooklyn to sulk it off over artisan pastries and fussy coffee. Not that Steve doubted the might of Sam’s Nana, or of any grandmother to instill terror, adoration, and obedience in their descendants. 

He might not have known his own grandmother, but he’d known Bucky’s back in the day, and he’d remembered the power that one determined old woman could wield by means of pie alone.

With Bucky’s Gran, it had been cherry in the summer, and mincemeat at Christmas. Sam’s Nana apparently favored sweet potato pecan for all occasions though, and while Steve was willing to be convinced on the matter of shortcrust and fillings, he really wasn’t sure he could face it this year. 

Not knowing how depressed Wanda was, facing down her first Christmas without her twin at her side. 

Not knowing how hard Natasha was trying not take on the guilty suspicion that she had been the one to drive Bruce away at the last. 

Not knowing how much Tony was still reeling, in public, in private, and politically, from the fallout of the Sokovian debacle. 

Christmas dinners and happy families just didn’t feel natural to Steve this year. He felt too big, too surly, too awkward, and very much like the hallucination Wanda had set on him in South Africa had been the sterling truth -- that Steve Rogers had no place in a peaceful world. That the only place Steve Rogers really belonged was either fighting a war, or waiting for a war to break out. 

There wasn’t much room for tinsel and pie in his heart this year, and he didn’t much fancy his odds of faking it successfully for the benefit of Sam’s distant relatives. 

He’d do better another year; one that wouldn’t leave the story of “And that’s how Captain America ruined Christmas” as a story for the Wilson clan to pass on down through the years.   
Across the street, a woman's frantic yelp of alarm snapped Steve's attention right back up out of his internal gloom, and set his heartbeat racing in an instant. He surged away from the wall, scanning the crowd for the disturbance even as he noted incursion routes, sniper nest possibilities, and bolt holes. The crowd was too thick, too many cars, too many _kids_ \-- if anybody panicked and ran, the trampling throng would kill more people than a gunman, and-

"What?" Sam snapped in his ear. "Steve, what is it? What just happened?"

Steve blew out a breath then, sagging with relief as he spotted the problem. "Why do women put dogs in their purses when they go out in public?" he asked by way of an explanation.

Sam chuckled, a little giddy. "Beats me, man. It bite someone, or run away?"

"Looks like both, sort of. There's a little kid over there with half a sandwich all over her, and the dog's running around the church steps dragging something that looks like salami." He chuckled as the dog's owner scuttled by in an awkward stoop, holding her gaping purse out in front of her as if the dog would just obligingly abandon its prize and jump back in. The thing was fat, fluffy, groomed to within an inch of its life, and despite being smaller than some rats Steve had seen in his day, it had found its inner White Fang, and looked like it was better fancying its odds as a feral subway cur than willing to face another bored hour stuffed under its owner's perfumed armpit.

"Guess I'll go help catch it before it runs into traffic," Steve told Sam, stepping into the press of people with a purpose now the spectacle across the street had slowed the flow. "You have a good trip, and I'll see you when you get back." Then he cut the call, turned his phone off, and dumped it into his pocket.

Across the street, the dog was still going, shaking its lunchmeat prey as if to snap its neck, and snarling enormously at bystanders who got within two feet of its madcap , zig-zagging race. It was selling the scene too -- Steve saw several people abandon very credible grabs at the thing when it made that two-sizes-too-big noise at them. 

But hadn't he been an old hand at that trick himself, back in the day -- talking so flat-out fierce and nose-biting mean that maybe, just maybe, the other guys would back off before anybody had to spit blood in the dust. It had been just one page in the Steve Rogers' Back-Alley Crusader playbook, and while this little puffy dog seemed to have a good handle on it, Steve himself wasn't buying.

Apparently, the father of the little girl with the ruined sandwich wasn't buying either. He'd finished calming her down, and now he turned, still in his parenting crouch, to glare at the little orange thief.

Steve's heart stopped then, and he did too -- shocked utterly still and silent as ice, coffee falling from his nerveless fingers, breath hanging like an empty word in the air before him as he stared.

The dog dodged another bystander's half-assed grab, turned to snarl at an expensive boot that feinted meanly at its side, and was thus entirely unprepared for it when the Winter Soldier's hand snapped out like a striking snake and caught it off the ground by its head. It made a noise like it was being wrung in half as he slung it, whip-fast into the gaping maw of its owner's purse.

There was a shocked moment, a pool of resonant silence on the church steps -- of stillness broken only by Bucky turning back to the little girl and scooping her onto his hip as he stood up. Then the dog's owner began to shriek in earnest, face scarlet, words incoherent with fury, hardly noticing that her pet had righted itself in the bag, popped its head back out again, and was still chewing on its stolen treat as if nothing untoward had happened.

Bucky afforded the woman one withering glare and turned his back, leaving the angry woman to the increasingly vocal scorn of the crowd as he and the little girl on his hip disappeared into the brightly colored frenzy of the holiday street as if they'd never been there at all. And Steve stood on the opposite curb like a man turned to stone -- artisan coffee and the dust of sudden hope lodged in his throat behind a name he hadn't even managed to say out loud.


	2. Chapter 2

*Dec 12 *

Any other time of any other year, Steve would never have got away with it.

"Steve," Natasha's voice was the first warning Steve had that she'd come up behind him in the lounge. "You're not yanking on that old thread again, are you?" Natasha leaned over the back of the sofa, her coattails brushing Steve's head as she peered at the laptop screen Steve had only barely prevented himself from slamming closed at her words. "You know you won't find Barnes till he wants to be found."

Steve shook his head, not so accidentally bumping her off his back as he did so. "Nope," he answered, and it was the truth. because he _wasn't_ searching for Bucky -- he knew exactly where he could find James Buchanan Barnes right now, supposing Steve were to be as reckless and foolish as his teammates always seemed to think he was, and go press the call button at 153 Drake street, unit C7 in case it might not be a HYDRA a trap. Steve was getting pretty damn tired of his friends assuming that his brain just shut down completely where Bucky was concerned.

"I'm checking up on this guy," he told Natasha, passing her the laptop so she wouldn't have to spy. Then he nodded a greeting to Wanda, who was lurking impatiently in the doorway with her luggage at her heels and her coat over her arm. "It's nothing pressing though," he offered to the haunted worry in her eyes.

Natasha, however, was reading the HYDRA file with focused concentration and a hint of relief. "Doctor William Kubota," she said, a little eagerly as she dropped her duffel at her feet to scroll down the page. "Neurosurgeon, huh. I don't remember him. Why, is he interesting?"

"Not especially," Steve answered, all innocence, and trusting that Wanda's eagerness to be away would cover any unspoken current in his thoughts. For the benefit of Natasha's too-perceptive eyes, he added, "He was listed among the rescued survivors when the Tryskelion came down. Slight injuries only, walked out of the hospital without a discharge just a few hours after the download went live, and he hasn't been seen since."

"Like just about every HYDRA agent who could manage it," Natasha observed, passing him back the computer with a significant eyebrow. "What makes him so special that you're researching him in your off time a week before Christmas instead of shopping for things you don't need, like every other good capitalist?"

Steve laughed at her then. "Remind me sometime to tell you about the time I got beat up leaving a Socialist party meeting," he snorted, closing the file away from sight. "Anyway, it's not so much Kubota I'm interested in, as his family. His wife and daughter moved to Brooklyn about a week after the DC incident, but apparently there's been no sign of him in DC. I thought I'd check the Missus out and see whether she was part of the 'Incentive Program' or a loyal Company Wife."

Natasha hummed speculatively, then scowled when she caught Steve flashing a look of sympathetic chagrin to Wanda, who looked about two seconds away from loudly sighing and dumping her suitcase to the floor. "I could do a little digging for you," she offered, and picked up her own case.

"Laura would kill you if you flagged the farm on an NSA watch list because you couldn't stop working for two weeks," Steve countered, standing with a grin. "And you ARE going to the farm, because you promised to take my presents to the kids, and you're not one to back out on a promise like that." He met Natasha's lowering glare with his best USO grin, but cracked up a little when Wanda snickered.

"And you say you only use your powers for good," the girl snorted, shaking her head as she pushed off the door frame and turned to go. "Are you coming Romanoff, or do I have to drive myself to the airport?"

"Better go with her," Steve invited with a head tip, "she doesn't have her license yet."

Natasha gave him an unimpressed glower, but shouldered her bag and turned for the door all the same. "You're not clever, Rogers. Keep me posted on what you find out on Kubota. You've got me curious now." 

She left unspoken the fact that she'd hack his personal files in an instant if she wasn't satisfied with his reports, and Steve would never know unless she told him in as many words. Acting like she knew everything took a good bit of back-scene preparation, after all.

Steve watched her go with every sign of confidence. Most likely, after all, it would come to nothing anyway. Bucky would move on as soon as he realized Steve was nearby, just as he'd done for the year Steve had dragged Sam all over the world in search of the ghost HYDRA had made of him. In two weeks, there'd be nothing to tell but another chapter in Steve's growing collection of close calls and might-have-beens. 

And in the meantime, there was the mystery of a woman and her daughter, the hole in the air where her husband ought to have been, and the Winter Soldier apparently living in the guest room of a Brooklyn brownstone the woman's great-grandmother had owned once upon a time -- when the world was no kinder, but to some, had seemed far simpler, and easier to understand.

*Dec 17 *

His phone was set to vibrate, but the fact that it buzzed at the same time as the comm in his ear chimed gave him a pretty good idea of who it was.

Steve backed away from the roof's edge, and slipped to the lea side of a skylight before he answered, "Hey, Tony. What's going on?"

Brittle cheer came blasting back at him on a cloud of Bing Crosby. "Capster! You're -- you... Christ, you sound terrible." The music faded abruptly. "Are you ok? Do you need backup or something? I can be there in five-"

Steve pushed a weary chuckle out past his aching chest and knotted throat. "I'm fine, Tony," he said, and wiped his face dry. "I've just been outside for awhile. Cold air and all, you know?" It was true, if not exactly honest.

"This part of your super secret Brooklyn project?" Tony pressed, sounding only a little less worried.

And Steve had to sigh. "Apparently not so secret after all. Hill told you, I guess?"

"Well that, and the GPS locator on your comm unit," Tony finally had the grace to sound at least a little abashed. "You have any luck getting access to the CCTV camera footage yet? Because if HYDRA's really setting up out there, you know Friday and I can kinda sidestep some of that red tape for you-"

"I really don't, Tony," Steve let his voice slam the door on that line of inquiry as down in the little park, one of the little kids managed to hit the ball with a ringing crack, and a chorus of excited shouting from the parents assembled. "It looks like... " he shifted to peer down at the impromptu game, spotted Bucky on the sidelines at once, his attention all on the kids playing ball on what might be the last clear, cold day before the coming snow. Little Lexie Kubota was beside him, bundled up tight and hopping up and down as she pointed excitedly with her own tiny plastic bat, as if bargaining for a turn batting against the older kids. Steve sighed, and settled back to his conversation. "It looks like there's nothing to worry about out here. It was all just a..."

"Coincidence?" Tony sounded gleeful. "You were totally gonna say coincidence, weren't you?"

_Mistake_ , Steve thought to himself ruefully, then summoned up a smile that would show in his voice and answered, "Not to you, I wasn't. Now tell me why you called, ok?"

"Egg nog," Tony answered at once.

Steve blinked. "It's not even eleven yet."

"Yeah, but I need you to check the recipe for me."

"Why would I know anything about your egg nog recipe, Tony?" Steve's laugh was genuine this time, if a little exasperated. "I never even tasted the stuff until a couple of years ago. At your Christmas party, in fact."

"Which was when you said I put too much booze in," Tony agreed. "Which, with your metabolism if you even noticed the booze then it was probably flammable, and anyway, you know modern art, and I need you to check Pepper's present for me. I kinda have a history of... erm..."

"Rabbits?" Steve supplied, his grin truing up at the memory of Pepper's recounting of the Six Foot Bunny story.

"Yeah well, so I need you to check it out and make sure I got her the right one. I think Magritte's okay, right? Does she like Magritte?"

Steve sat up, ball game abruptly forgotten. "You got her a _Magritte_?"

Tony made a 'pssht' noise. "Buddy, I got her _the_ Magritte. The guy, I mean. Or what's left of him, anyway. Hey, did you know there's a market for human remains these days? I mean you gotta love capitalism-"

The noise Steve made then was outraged, appalled, and fiercely strangled down to all but audible only through application of every ounce of Steve's iron will. The comm unit picked it up though, because of course it did, and Tony started to laugh at once. "Man, you are too easy!

"Tony..."

"Just come and see the painting," Tony managed through his hilarity. "I'll even let you help me figure out how to wrap it."

Steve peered over the roof ledge again. Down on the field, Bucky had taken Lexie a little way off from the ball game, and was teaching her how to swing a bat. The sight made nostalgia and envy rise like twin leviathans from Steve's belly, and tangle into an impassable knot in his throat, so he moved on to scanning the park and the buildings around it for any sign of watchers, of a trap, of anything (aside from himself) that looked unduly interested in the scene below.

And, as he had found every time he'd gone looking for it in the last two weeks, Steve found nothing out of place. And, as had happened every time before, Steve found the fact anything but soothing. _"One day we'll have our own ball team, Stevie, you and me,"_ a ghost whispered in Steve's ear, all rakish grin and glowing future, _"The Barnes-and-Rogers league! And they'll be the terror of the Minors."_

_"Name like that, they sound more like a circus act,"_ Steve had answered back, _"half magic act and jugglers, half sideshow freaks-_ " and then Bucky had tackled him down and tickled him until he'd quit grumbling.

"What was that, Cap?" Tony's voice broke through the memory like a repulsor beam, and Steve found himself pathetically grateful for it. 

"Nothing," he answered with a cough. "It'll take me a bit to get up there."

"Unless I come and get you..."

Steve shook his head and made for the fire escape. "Let's not make a scene today, okay? This is a nice neighborhood, and they don't deserve a paparazzi infestation."

"If you say so," Tony answered, sounding distracted already. "So hey, what if I put some of Thor's mead stash in the egg nog instead of the Everclear. Think that would work out better?"

*April 25*

They all had nightmares, all the original Avengers. They all knew that, and by unspoken agreement, they all knew they would never talk about them.

Only one night, just a few weeks before their first, disastrous venture to Sokovia, Bruce and Steve had wound up in the team lounge together, facing down the still, haunted early hours of a Wednesday morning, and somehow, talking about it had been the only reasonable thing to do.

"It's not the ones where he kills people I love that are the worst," Bruce had whispered, staring down ghosts in his teacup's steam, "Those are bad, but they're easy enough to shake off. It's just I have this one where... where he never happened. Where I never did the gamma experiments, and the Hulk never happened at all, only I still... I still hit things. People. I still ruin everything because... because the monster isn't him, really. It's me." 

Steve had let the silence lie for a long moment, reverent to the confessional air of the darkness, and knowing better than to offer absolution against another man's demons. Finally, he'd mustered up his own bleeding wound to the shadows in the only solidarity he could offer.

"You ever read _An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge_?" he'd asked.

Bruce's eyes had flashed in the city light as he'd glanced over. "Ambrose Bierce, wasn't it? The one about the man being hanged in-"

"In the Civil War," Steve affirmed. "He was a deserter, and they caught him. Only at the last minute the rope broke, and he escaped. Made it almost all the way home, and then... then it turned out it was just his mind running away with him while he was dying in the noose. It was all a fantasy, and he wasn't going home at all. Not ever again." 

Steve took a breath, deep and shaking as, in the corner of his eye, Bruce had nodded soberly. "And you think you're still in the ice?" he'd ventured. "That all this is just a dying fantasy."

And then Steve had had to laugh -- wet and ugly and aching. "No. I think I'm still in the damned Rebirth capsule, getting baked by Howard Stark's machines while Erskine's drugs rip me apart from the inside, and congressmen and generals watch the whole damned show." He gulped at his own tea and grimaced. "And everything I think I've managed to do -- saving Bucky, fighting Hydra, stopping the Red Skull, kissing Peggy... that was all just my brain running away from the fact that I'm dying alone and in pain, and locked inside a metal box."

"And now you're out of the ice again, it's all gotten even stranger," Bruce had agreed. "Aliens and Gods and ghosts and monsters."

"And I can't prove any of it's real. Not a damned thing, not even this -" and he'd thudded a fist against the thick muscle of his chest. "Nothing I think I've done; none of the things I think ever mattered, or maybe made the world better; maybe none of it's anything but my brain, making things up as it shuts down for good."

Silence had reigned for a long and heavy moment, and then Bruce had shifted restlessly against the leather of the sofa. "So what do you do?"

And Steve had taken a long time to answer. "I guess I just pretend it's true after all," he managed at last. "If I'm dying, then what can I do about it? If it's all pretend, and none of my life ever mattered, then... then I guess the fantasy's all I've got to work with, right? I have to do the best I can with it, even if it's all just in my head."

Bruce had chuckled, and it sounded real this time. "Steve Rogers just doesn't know how to give up, does he?"

And Steve had squirmed a little bit under the naked admiration in those words, but he'd managed a shrug and a grin. "You start running, they never really let you stop."

And then they'd let the silence take them again; one man pretending the monsters were real, the other pretending they weren't, but neither one feeling quite so alone in the teeth of the night anymore.

Then, in Sokovia, a girl with rage seething from her mind had showed them both a deeper, starker, more vicious kind of nightmare. One man had run, and one man had frozen to the core, and neither one, it seemed, was much good at pretending anymore.

* Dec 23 *

"Captain?"

"Yes?" Steve answered without looking up from the footage on his tablet. Then he remembered that the soft voice behind him belonged to Vision now, and not to Jarvis, and he put on a smile to turn around.

"I have been asked to come to Stark Tower tomorrow evening," Vision went on, looking mildly perplexed. That was often his default expression though, so Steve tried not to read much into it. "To watch a movie and drink alcohol. Sir says it is a necessary family tradition."

Steve nodded, and made an effort to keep the relief from his expression -- Vision taking an interest in Steve's Brooklyn investigation had been one of his greatest worries, and Stark made the very best of distractions. "That sounds like one of Tony's traditions, all right. What time will you be going?"

The bewildered expression deepened as Vision's gaze flickered over Steve's expression. "I would prefer not to go alone," he admitted. "Sir... seems unhappy in my presence, and yet he seems to take offense when I do not accept his invitations. I am not certain how to proceed, and it seems you have a better understanding in this matter than I do."

Steve blinked, never having thought he'd hear anybody say he was better at anything to do with Tony Stark than they were. "I... I think he might be... it's maybe hard for him to reconcile who you are now, with the part of you he knew before," Steve ventured. "He'd had Jarvis with him for so many years; relied on him without a second thought, and they... they even saved each other's lives."

Vision blinked, a slow realization. Then he nodded, jerky and slow, as though he was still learning the gesture. "I remember that, somewhat. Does he resent me? For no longer being his creation alone?"

"No," Steve had no hesitation at all on that count. "I think he's trying to get used to who you are now, and maybe to find a way to connect with you, and to give you a fair shake. But at the same time, he's... grieving for the Jarvis he won't get back again." He offered a sympathetic smile and rubbed at the tension the conversation was spawning in his chest. "I guess that probably doesn't make it any easier for you, does it?"

A shake of his head, and Vision examined his shoes. "I would still prefer it if you would agree to come," he said. "Colonel Rhodes left for California this afternoon."

And honestly, it was just about the very last thing Steve wanted to do. Tony Stark's family baggage was the stuff of legend, and according to gossip within the team, it tended to be at its most disruptive during the holiday season. And there was still the matter of Brooklyn to sort out... but then Steve found himself nodding. 

Nodding, and glancing down at the tablet in his hands, and the coroner's report on a John Doe pulled out of the East River at the beginning of December -- a black male in his late 30's, all teeth and both hands missing, and so much damage done by fish and crabs that a cause of death was impossible to establish for sure. The only thing that made it stand out at all had been that autopsy had revealed a Hydra pin lodged inside the man's esophagus, just behind a single 50 caliber bullet, Soviet made, with no rifling.

When no one had claimed the body within two weeks, the body had been cremated, and without a much more personal, and obvious use of Steve's authority to get at the coroner's samples, there would be no way for Steve to know for sure whether it had been William Kubota or not.

"Sure," he told his teammate, shutting the file reader down and summoning up a smile. "There's something I need to do later on, but I'll go with you for awhile."


	3. Chapter 3

*Dec 25, 12:30am*

A block East from the church, all sign of the crowd were gone. Christmas eve and the storm had made a wasteland of the Brooklyn streets -- only the free Clinic, the Chinese restaurant next door to it, and the Bodega on the corner showed any sign of life through the hollow, snowy night. New York might be the city that never slept, but Brooklyn wasn't above hiding under the covers to pretend on a night like this one.

Steve pulled his collar up against the snow and walked faster past the Clinic's grimy front windows, but found himself hesitating just on the far side of the splash of light, peering back through the dirty glass. Just because he needed to see, he told himself, firmly ignoring the unpleasant twist beneath his belly -- he needed to see things with clear eyes now, so that when could'a, would'a, and should'a haunted him from sleep in the years to come, he'd know them for lies, and remember this as truth.

The Clinic's waiting room was empty but for the single weary nurse, newly hired at the clinic that summer, and so lacking the tenure and rank to avoid getting stuck with the overnight shift on Christmas eve despite the 4 year old daughter waiting for her at home. Elissa Kubota sat alone; petite, pale, and boredly paging through one of the waiting room magazines under the single strand of cheap lights around the admission desk window. Unaware, it seemed, of Steve’s regard.

Low nurse on the totem pole had to give up holidays all the time, as Steve very well remembered, and desperately needing the holiday pay made it even harder to push back. Elissa Kubota might not have seemed to need money, given the resources she still held jointly with her absentee husband, but even Steve's meager research had revealed that she had not touched a penny of it in the year and a half since she'd taken her daughter and left William Kubota’s DC house behind.

Instead, she worked all hours and kept her head down. Deep shadows had sketched a tale long nights and hard work into her face, but Steve could easily see the pretty young woman she’d surely been not too long ago. She looked for all the world like a woman on the run from a life she was half afraid would drag her back again. Only to be honest, she hadn't run all that far from that life, had she? 

Steve had been able to trace ownership of the Brooklyn apartment to her grandmother without any trouble at all, so anyone who knew her or her family would immediately know where to look for her. HYDRA, Steve knew from experience, was very good at learning all there was to know about the families of their particularly useful assets, and from what he’d been able to glean out of the download records, Will Kubota had been useful indeed.

It would be easy, in that light, to say that Elissa wanted to be found. And what had kept Steve coming back to Brooklyn these last aching weeks, was the fact that if (when) HYDRA did come and find her, they would also find the most fiercely coveted asset that nest of snakes had ever produced living under the same roof. They’d find him living just as if he’d never been to war, never wiped blood from his hands, never shivered out his name rank and serial number like it was the only real thing in the world... never looked his best friend in the eye and shot him cold.

They’d find James Barnes treating the small family like his own; taking the girl to and from school; slipping hot meals into the narrow gaps between the mother’s long shifts, and cleaning up afterward; playing music too loud in the living room, and dancing that beautiful little girl around on his hip until he could charm her weary, golden mother into taking a turn as well. Smiling at her with all the charm he’d ever had, making her laugh and blush as he turned them around and around by the Christmas tree’s glow. They’d find him, and they’d drag the Winter Soldier out of him again however they could.

Assuming they hadn’t done so already.

Because Steve had read the files on the Winter Soldier -- hell, to hear Sam tell it, he'd memorized them -- so he knew that there had been a time, somewhere in the murky depths of the Cold War, when they had experimented with the Winter Soldier's capacity for espionage beyond basic assassination. There had been oblique references to procedures used to prepare the asset for complicated operations -- insertions requiring particular skills, and cover stories able to withstand intense background scrutiny. 

So someone, at some time, had obviously made a go at not only taking things out of Bucky Barnes' head, but at putting other things in, and while the newer records showed no such measures taken with the Asset, that didn't mean there wasn't anybody left who knew enough to try it again. And that was the idea that wouldn’t let Steve sleep -- wouldn’t let him take Bucky’s apparent happiness at face value and stay the hell away from where he knew he wasn’t needed. Kept him grinding his teeth on the stump of his guilt, and hating himself a little more for it every time he checked the neighborhood over yet again for any sign of ambush or trap. Because he didn't know which would hurt worse -- that it was a trap for him, and Bucky was the bait; that it was a trap for the Winter Soldier, and if Steve walked away, he’d be abandoning Bucky to his torturers all over again; or that wasn’t a trap at all, Bucky was happy, and Steve shoving in where he wasn’t wanted would only ruin it for them all.

"They don't have Methadone."

"What?" Steve whirled on his heel, heart knocking hard on his ribs, one hand dropping to reach for the shield he wasn't carrying. A streetlight away from Steve's patch of darkness the speaker, a tiny, white haired woman in a tan colored coat gave him an unimpressed glare.

"Ain't that kind of clinic," she elaborated, tugging her wire grocery trolley through the slushy snow. "They don't keep nothin' in there you couldn't get over the counter at Rite Aid, so it ain't worth the surveillance footage of your pretty face, sunshine."

Steve flinched, glanced through the window again, and then down at his own dark clothes. "You think I'm here to rob the place?" He honestly hadn't thought of that, and was more than a little bit chagrined at the oversight now.

She grinned in that predatory way that all sharp-witted oldsters got when they spotted too much youthful enthusiasm. "Well it don't look like you're here for stitches now, does it?" She gave her stubborn trolley a yank, then cursed when the left wheel popped off and lurched the whole thing over in the snow.

Steve lurched for the scattering groceries, catching a bag of potatoes, several apples, and a half gallon of milk before they could wind up in the gutter. The woman was hunched over toppled cart when he brought them back to her, holding the errant wheel in one hand while she scraped at the snow with her boot and glowered at it like it had insulted her son.

“Goddamned cotterpin finally went,” she snapped as Steve drew near. Two more apples lay in the heaped snow behind her. “Don’t suppose you’ve such a thing as a penny nail and a pair of pliers in that fancy coat, do you?”

“Left my toolkit home, I’m afraid,” Steve answered, kneeling to inspect the cart, just in case it might be something he could Jerry-rig with brute strength. It wasn’t, and neither of them was really surprised.

“Well _that’s_ useless then,” she said, giving the cart a kick as she straightened up. “I live three blocks west of here, 4 floors up, and my building’s got no elevator.” Then she gave Steve a meaning stare and added, “Feel like being useful, sunshine?”

Steve gave her an incredulous laugh, and turned the cart upright so he could put the groceries back into it. “A minute ago you though I was here to rob the clinic,” he noted, dusting wet snow from his dress trousers.

She gave a cackle so shameless it echoed in the empty street. “Sunshine, I been living here since this neighborhood was nothing but hookers, smack dealers, and drag queens. Anything I had worth the stealing went missing back in the 80’s. Now come on,” and she shook the plastic bag in her other hand, “my hot & sour soup is geting cold as my damn feet out here.”

And, lacking any better answer, Steve picked up the old lady’s grocery cart, knocked the worst of the snow from its undercarriage, and tucked it under his arm. Inside the clinic, Elissa Kubota watched the conclusion of their little pavement drama with the relieved air of someone deciding she wasn’t going to have to put her coat on and go out into the snow after all, and she gave Steve a nod and a weary smile when she caught him looking back. He looked away quickly, hoping the cold would keep the color from his face.

“I wouldn’t have, you know,” he told the old woman as she marched past him. “Robbed the clinic, I mean. I was just...”

She cackled again, and slapped his arm. “Course you weren’t. Any halfway decent crook knows you don’t lurk around the front door of a place you mean to hit. You’da been up the alley if you meant business.”

Steve huffed, only half annoyed, but not wanting to encourage that line of thinking with laughter. “It’s just she reminded me of someone, is all. The nurse, I mean. I wasn’t there to make trouble, I was just... woolgathering, I suppose.”

The woman gave him a skeptical glance. “Well maybe so, but that ain’t how the Blue woulda made it.” As if summoned, a police cruiser rolled past on the deserted street, its headlights blurry in the flying snow. “They take lots more notice now the Trendies have all moved in around here, and you’re just too damn pretty to go spending Christmas eve in jail.”

And what could Steve do with that but laugh, and follow where she led?

“I’m Steve, by the way,” he told her as they walked, hoping for a name in reply.

But she only smirked and patted Steve’s arm again. “Of course you are.”

***

It took Steve almost three blocks to get the old woman's name out of her, but the banter she kept up with him as they walked through the whirling snow was a blessing he was grateful for, all the same. Especially as he noticed them closing in, inexorably, on the brownstone Elissa Kubota lived in.

There was a part of him -- the part that had been scouring the area for weeks in search of any sign that HYDRA was lurking there; the part that knew the route Bucky took to get Lexie to and from the school every day; that knew where Elissa worked, and which store she stopped at to get groceries on her way home; which coffee shop Bucky went to when he wanted to use the internet; the part of Steve still reeling at the thought that Bucky could have moved on so wholly, so completely from Steve's life that he hadn't even allowed Steve a word to his face, -- that part wanted to slink away before he was spotted. 

But the part of him that was growing disgusted with his own spying, his own intrusion into what was looking more and more genuine -- the part of him that had come down to Brooklyn to finally say goodbye -- that part of him was relieved not to be facing the moment alone.

Even if his companion was a salty, sassy old dame who cussed like a sailor, and wasn't about to let Steve get away until she'd had him set his snowy coat to dry over the radiator, and grated her up some potatoes while they were waiting, because they might as well make good use of the time, and she hadn't made latkes in years. She wasn't Jewish herself, of course, but her Adam had been, and she'd gotten used to it all over the years. Still thought maybe her Judith was keeping up with it, though Layla was probably still an atheist.

Lana's front window looked out onto the street, across which and two doors down, Bucky Barnes was assembling a little girl's bicycle in Elissa Kubota's living room. 

"You don't talk to them?" Steve made himself ask from the darkened parlor, turned sidelong to the window so he could see the kitchen as well. "Not even for the holidays?"

She cast him a knowing look and a half-sour smile to go with it. "Not so much these days, no. They're all grown up, those girls. Got lives of their own in other places. And anyway, it's not like they don't know where to find me if they decide they can put up with their old Mom's liberal politics for a visit."

"That's..." Steve took a breath, outraged and injured on her behalf. "But you're their- that's-"

"That's kids, honey," she told him, slipping a wad of potatoes hissing into the oil. "They leave. It's what they're born to do, you know. They grow up, and they go off, and they make their own lives. You don't get to keep 'em, no matter how much you may want to," and here, she gave him a piercing glance. "But I'm guessing you know that, right Mister Midtown Steve?"

He didn't startle. In fact, he didn't take his eyes away from the window across the street, where the candy colored Christmas lights were glinting off the bend and flex of an uncovered metal arm. "I suppose I do, Ma'am," he answered, and his voice didn't quaver at all.

* Dec 25, 1:12 am *

Steve left Lana's apartment when the latkes and soup were finished, and his hostess was yawning stubbornly over her dishtowel while Steve finished washing up.

She offered him her sofa to sleep on, and didn't seem overly inclined to believe him when he said he needed to get home -- "Sunshine, if you needed to be somewhere, you'da gone there already," she'd grumbled, even as she handed him his now-dry overcoat. But she'd let him beg off all the same, on the grounds that her sofa might not actually be long enough for him after all, and she had better sense than to foist sleeping conditions like those on a grown man who probably did have a better bed waiting for him somewhere.

Steve, more charmed than he'd remotely expected to be, promised to drop by again sometime, and though he suspected she didn't believe him at all, he found he meant every word. Then he waited outside her apartment until he heard her shoot the deadbolt, and headed down the stairs with his hands deep inside his now-warm coat pockets.

The light was still on in the Kubota's living room when he reached the street, though from that lower angle, Steve could see nothing but the plasterwork ceiling, washed in hectic Christmas colors. "She's right," he said to the night. "Maybe you were mine once, as much as anybody can be anybody else's, and maybe we both had a hard time of it since then, but..." he blinked hard and forced his voice steady, if he couldn't make it strong. "But that don't mean I get to keep you now."

The light was motile, soothing, and silent, shades of pink and orange, green and blue pulsing and fading like far off daydreams. "I hope you're really as happy as you look, Bucky," Steve said after a long moment. "Because I don't have anything to offer you now. All I've got is fighting and danger -- terrorists, and aliens, and Hydra on my tail every time I quit looking out for them, and you... you don't deserve that. You did your bit. You should get to rest now. You should get to go home."

And in his memory, a dance hall dream he'd once had in a bad moment in South Africa, played out just a little bit different. Two dark haired beauties danced him back and forth between them, and when one said they could go home, the other grinned and made it true with a shameless, searing kiss. With a shiver he couldn't suppress, Steve thanked his stars that Wanda hadn't known him well enough back then to break him with this truth.

And then he turned on his heel and began the long walk back to Manhattan.  



	4. Chapter 4

* Dec 25, 1:15 am *

He heard the latch click on the floor above him -- a tiny, stealthy sound, but that was all the warning he ever needed. Silent as a ghost, he moved the equipment from sight, and put his back to the wall, ready and waiting when the squeaky board at the head of the stairs announced a slight weight passing over it.

"Lexie, it's not time yet," he warned from the bottom of the stairs as her little brown toes appeared at the top landing. "You know that presents have to wait till your ma gets home." 

He was expecting some wheedling, a childish attempt to bargain before a grudging, grumbling retreat. Or maybe, depending on how stubborn she was feeling, a reckless, headlong rush down the stair to try and catch a glimpse of her present before he could catch her and march her straight back up to bed. What he got instead was a teary sniffle, and a shuffling of feet that put his nerves onto high alert at once.

"Kidlet?" he prompted, heading up the stairs on silent, bare feet. "What's wrong?"

"Grampather was outside," she answered around the stuffed toy she had crammed against her mouth. "I seed him looking."

And just like that, his blood froze. He felt the warmth boiling away in a wash of something hard and unforgiving, and very, very red. "Tell me," he said, and sat on the step to keep her from getting any closer to any window.

She shuffled toward him though, her dark eyes great and wet with fear. "I heared the door and I thought it was mommy, but it was across the street, and it was him." she shivered a little closer, leaned against his flesh shoulder in a silent bid to be held close. 

"Alone?" he asked, taking her without conscious thought. "Was anybody with him?"

She shook her head, all but climbing into his lap where he crouched on the stair. "He looked like in mommy's picture," she said. The bear was wet against his neck, and he could feel her tiny heart shivering in her chest as she clung. "Do we hafta move again now?"

"I don't know," he answered, thinking hard. "You're sure nobody was with him? Was there a car maybe?"

She shook her head.

"You're sure you weren't dreaming?"

Another headshake, this one harder. "I got up and looked from my window. He even had the big black coat, like in the picture."

"Shh," he soothed, and switched her to his left hip so his knife hand would be free and steady. "I believe you. I do. We're going to go look right now, okay?"

She nodded then, clutching him tight with arms and legs, and staying in the shelter of his body when he sidled up to the glass and peered down through the whirling white. "Where did you see him?" he asked her, and only then did she lean out from cover and point with the bear.

"There. Tricia's building," she said. And sure enough, the snow was disturbed at the stoop two doors down across the street, muddled and trampled as though someone had stood there for some time, watching, or planning, before walking off alone back up the street. 

Toward the Clinic, where Alexander Pierce's granddaughter was working an all night shift alone.

Three minutes later, he was armed and shod and struggling into his coat as he dialed Elissa's cell phone number on this week's burner phone. It rolled to voice mail, as per their protocol, and he began the debrief as soon as the beep sounded.

"Possible sighting at oh-one-ten am. No backup detected yet. Child is in the panic room with security armed, and I am in pursuit now. Take your sidearm, knives and garotte from your locker and conceal them on your person until I call with the all-clear, and do _not_ let any patients in there until I call, do you hear me?" 

It was no use telling her that -- he knew it in some ancient, wordless part of his brain. She always got that stubborn set to her jaw when he took to taking care of her, told her what to do, or how to do it. Got a blaze in her eyes like when some bully was looming over him and he was fit to put a fist in whether he'd get back twenty in payment or not, and there was no talking to him then. All you could do was hurry to catch up before it got too bad.

The snow was falling thicker now, but there was only the one track broken through the smooth, even coat of white, and it might as well have been flashing with lights and arrows. His prey had gone this way, and while the thick, damp snowfall obscured details he might have gleaned about height, stride, or footwear, it left him what he most needed to know.

He followed the tracks long enough to know for sure, and then he found a fire escape and went aloft. The sig sauer in his coat pocket bounced against his hip as he climbed, but that didn't bother him -- if anything, it felt familiar, a deadened weight against the anxiety that had been boiling in his gut for weeks. He'd known someone was watching, but he'd put so much effort into playing the bait, distracting notice away from Elissa and Lexie, that he'd never properly caught them at it.

Well, he was going to catch them now. 

He'd cached his Dragonov in pieces, and an ammo magazine on this rooftop months ago, and had taken care to be sure that it hadn't been found in the meantime. It still hadn't, and he had the rifle assembled and loaded in under a minute.

And that was when his phone buzzed, loud and alarming between his ribs and the rooftop beneath him. He swore -- against protocol -- and broke position -- _absolutely against protocol_ \-- to snatch the phone out and look at the message, flashing yellow letters against the sodium vapor night.

DON'T it said.

And then it buzzed again, adding, SHOOT.

Hostage situation then. 

He ground his teeth, tossed the phone aside, and settled back into position, eye pressed to the scope. In the street below, a tall, light haired man in a black overcoat was striding unhurriedly away from the Clinic door, which had swept the snow clear in a wedge before it just moments before. There was no sign of Elissa through the windows from this angle.

He exhaled and sighted on the back of the tall man's head, finger tightening against the trigger. "Your work has shaped the world," he breathed, "Now I need you to do it one more time..."

The Clinic door banged open. A woman's voice shouted into the night. The man in the black coat whirled, crouched low as if ready for combat and.

And he wasn't Pierce.

He wasn't Pierce at all.

Elissa was still in the street by the time he made it to the ground, her phone in one hand, envelope in the other, as the snow gathered in her hair. Steve had given her his coat, but it sat open across her shoulders.

And Steve. Steve was... Steve looked...

He had known he was being watched for weeks -- that had been the whole point of staying there. He’d done his best to look innocent, ignorant and vulnerable, but no attack had come, not for weeks. And now he could guess why. 

Of course Steve had found him in Brooklyn -- of course he had. Steve could find him anywhere, if he was looking -- if he knew to be looking -- but in all the long days since the Helicarrier fight, he'd never imagined that Steve would _only_ look. After that messs in Sokovia, he hadn’t thought Steve would even _be_ looking anymore. 

He should have known better.

He'd seen Steve's face since the Potomac, of course, and it had always been the same; desperate, half-hopeful, hungry for some scrap of acknowledgement he hadn't been able to give. But what he got then was a look of wounded resignation, and a bitter twist of his lips before Steve's gaze skated away altogether. He didn’t look thin, or pale, or unhealthy, but failure sat on his shoulders like a spectre, and Bucky hated it instantly.

"Passports and ID's," Elissa rushed to meet him in the street, envelope in hand as she babbled. "He's not with them, James. He said he wanted to help us hide better, be safer, and-"

"I know," he says.

"And I believe him, James," she said, tripping over the words. "I know he was with SHIELD once, but I believe he had nothing to do with-"

He caught her hand in his left, stilled her in the shock of the metal touch uncovered. "He isn't," he told her, the words rough in his throat, his eyes locked past her shoulder, to where Steve still waited in a pool of shadow between two streetlights, as if any darkness could ever hide him. "It's all right," he said, and pressed her hand back into cover of the coat. "I know him."

***

"I’m sorry Buck," Steve was bound into himself on the breakroom sofa, a chipped mug of coffee balanced on his knee, and a bitter sort of defeat hunched in his shoulders. "I didn’t mean to intrude. I just needed to be..." a vague, awkward gesture -- one he couldn't help following with his eyes. "I just... to be sure you were really all right after... well... everything. I’m sorry Buck."

Bucky looked down at last, smiling to realize that the name didn't sound ridiculous when Steve said it. It sounded like it hurt to say, sure, but it didn't make him think of a dog, the way he'd first thought at the Smithsonian.

He stole a glance through the fall of his hair, noted how Steve's teeth caught and held his lower lip as if he wasn't even aware of the anxious tell. _Bucky_ , he thought to himself. _That can be me. For him._

"You, um." Steve took a deep breath and blew it out. In the other room, Elissa was on the phone, trying to find someone at one of the local hospitals who might be willing to cover the balance of her shift. "You don't have to worry about me. Getting underfoot, I mean. I'm not planning on hanging around, and-"

Bucky stole his coffee, downed a swig, then set it back on his knee. "I’m an asshole," he said.

"No, Bucky." The response was immediate and unthinking. 

He held up a hand to still the rest. "I’m an asshole. A selfish one. And I um thought you weren’t even in New York anymore. The news said the Avengers were moving to-"

"The upstate headquarters, yeah." Steve ran a hand through his hair, melting snow somehow failing to make him look bedraggled, even under the unforgiving florescent lights. "After Ultron we decided that quartering in a population center was just asking for trouble. But I still..." he shrugged. "Well. New York’s always been my home, I guess. Can't really keep a Brooklyn boy away for long." He huffed a laugh at his joke, or maybe at himself, and then he fell silent.

In the other room, Elissa ended her call, and began to dial again.

"Bucky, I’m so-"

"I killed her husband."

Steve blinked, but somehow didn't look shocked. 

"Elissa’s husband," Bucky explained, trying not to hurry. "He was HYDRA. One of the ones who..." He waved vaguely at his head, watched Steve's gaze follow the bright metal hand unerringly.

"I'd guessed maybe that was the case," Steve said, something gentle in his voice. "There were some signs he was planning-"

"Bad things," Bucky interrupted. "He was planning bad things. So I stopped him." Steve nodded, and Bucky found himself wanting more of that coffee, just for something to do with his mouth that wasn't stupid. "He was bad to her and Lexie too, so they didn’t mind that I did it."

"It's okay, Bucky," Steve said, voice tight. "I understand, and it's... it's okay. You deserve it. You deserve to be-"

"-and then Elissa remembered when her grandfather assigned m- the Soldier to protection detail once time when they tried to-"

"-happy, and you always wanted a family, so you don't have to explain why you want to stay."

"-run and he wouldn't let them go, and we thought maybe I could use that conditioning to draw him out of hiding if she ran again, and... wait, what?"

"What?" Steve echoed, equally baffled. "Draw who out of hiding? You said her husband's-"

"He's dead, I told you. What does that have to do with anything?"

"Well, it seems to have a lot to do with why you're keeping house with them right now, Buck!" Steve checked himself then, with visible effort, and a glance at the front room, where Elissa was trying yet another call.

"I already told you why I'm staying there," Bucky gritted, dropping his foot off his knee with a thud of snowy treads, "and it ain't for playin' house."

Steve's blue eyes narrowed, and Bucky could see him replaying the conversation in his head. "They’re not..." his voice shook, then he steadied it with a sip of coffee. "I mean you... So you’re protecting them now?"

Bucky smiled at the shy blue hope that crept into that voice. "No," he said, just because he was, as advertised, an asshole, "They’re the bait." On cue, Steve's face went over all appalled, and Bucky gave up a laugh. "For the Secretary," he said, then took a deep and steadying breath. "P-p-Pierce. She says her grandfather always comes for her whenever she tries to leave. So this time when he shows up, I'll be waiting to-"

"Was," Steve said, still looking a little stunned. Bucky stared at him hard until he shook it off, slugged back a shot of coffee, and explained himself. "Pierce _was_ her grandfather. He’s dead now. He won’t be coming for anybody."

Bucky was lunging before he knew it, catching Steve's hand in a solid clench of metal. "You saw the body?" he snarled, his heart thudding in his chest, cold sweat breaking across his skin.

"No, but the Black Widow did," Steve answered at once, holding Bucky's gaze square on, without a flinch. "He took two in the left chest and went down." Bucky hissed, a protest gathering on his tongue, but Steve rolled onward, squeezing back hard against the metal fingers. "He was shot on the top floor of the Tryskelion -- the Executive overlook floor, -- in an empty room on lockdown. There was no medical help in range when he went down. No crash team, Bucky." He shook their knotted hands, drew Bucky's drooping gaze back to meet his own again. "He went down with two in the left chest 45 seconds before a helicarrier crashed into the Tryskelion and brought the whole complex down. Forensic teams are still working to identify all the bodies found in the wreckage, but partial remains with Pierce’s ID and clothes were found, and they match the basic... Bucky?" Steve's voice came as from far away, through a lengthening tunnel. "Bucky are you okay?"

There was a lurch of motion, and suddenly Steve was below him, kneeling on the clinic's worn linoleum floor and staring up into Bucky's face, his eyes wide and worried and impossibly blue, and Bucky had to ask, "He’s dead?"

Steve smiled. "At least as dead as Johann Schmidt."

It was like an iron band that had been clamped tight around his chest gave way all at once. The breath whooshed out of him, his spine sagging in something that had to be relief. "That’s..." he blinked, hard. "He’s the last one."

Steve blinked, still concerned. "The last...?"

"He was the last one who knew me," Bucky said, and didn't care when his voice broke a little. "Who w. w. worked me. That’s all of them. That’s..." He took back his hand, covered his face against the emotion he could feel twisting it up against him.

Steve stayed where he was, never let go of his hand, just knelt there, warm and solid while Bucky fought himself back into hand. His shy, not-quite-daring-to-be-hopeful face was waiting for him when Bucky managed to peer out again. "So. What now then?" he asked.

And Bucky suddenly realized that he couldn't not kiss him, not for another second. The mad, hectic thing cracking loose of the ice inside him had to know for sure if he remembered what those lips tasted like, and there wasn't a shred of him anywhere that didn't want to just grab Steve by the neck and find out for sure.

"Got it!" Elissa called triumphantly. "I'm gonna owe Georgia Jenkins a huge favor, but she's said she'd come on over from Hell's Kitchen and and whoa!" 

Sensible shoes skidded on the tiles, and Bucky didn't care. He couldn't care, not with Steve pressing up into his grip, keen and eager under his lips and tongue, and yes. Yes he did remember. He remembered, and now nobody could ever make him forget again.

She was still there in the doorway, watching them with a fond smile when they came up for air. Steve was pink to the roots of his hair, and Bucky could feel his own skin heated across his cheeks, but he refused to flinch from her gaze, nor to let Steve pull too far back from him. Not now he'd finally learned it might be safe to reach for him at all.

"So, uh, it's gonna take Georgia a little bit to get here," Elissa ventured in a voice thick with amusement. "Think maybe I could convince one or both of you guys to head on back to the apartment and get my daughter out of the panic room?"

Steve lurched to his feet then, tugging free of Bucky's grip in a way almost nobody else could anymore. "She's there alone?" he bleated, horrified.

Bucky rolled his eyes, but got to his own feet all the same. "Relax, Steve, she's perfectly safe. That's what the Panic room is for, you know."

"She's just a little kid though," he went on, hardly mollified. "She's gotta be scared in there, all on her own." 

"My thoughts exactly," Elissa put in, forestalling the argument Bucky had been about to launch on just how little actually scared young miss Alexandria Kubota. But then he recalled how she'd clung to him, fingers clenched tight around him, and her blue-coated bear until he told her to go inside so he could lock the door and arm the system, and he thought maybe he shouldn't say that after all.

"Well, she'll cheer right up when I tell her you're comin' home early," Bucky offered to them both.

Elissa grinned. "Even more so if you put the lasagne into the oven a few hours early, and convince the Captain to stay for dinner." She offered Steve a look parked somewhere between pleading and expectant, and added, "You could crash with us tonight as well, in case it's getting too late. The guest room's kind of small, but we have an air mattress that should still fit in there, if you and James don't mind-"

"Sure," Steve cut in, his face spreading in a wide, watery grin as he reached for his coat with one hand, and Bucky's hand with the other. "I'd love to stay, Ma'am, even if I sleep on the floor."

Then followed the expected flurry of protests and exclamations, cut short by the necessity of them getting back to the apartment, and Elissa getting enough paperwork done that she could get away with the shift switch. They were outside the Clinic again, back in the whirling, dancing snow within two minutes.

"They won't miss you?" he asked after a block or so of silence. "Your team won't come hunting for you if you aren't where they expect to find you in the morning?" Because from everything he'd seen, the Avengers were like that with each other -- a meddling sort of family with superpowers and far too much press exposure.

Steve only grasped his hand tighter and flashed him a grin under the dancing snow. "How about you let me handle my team, huh Bucky?" he asked, all sass and flash as they passed beneath a street light, carving two tracks through the snow where before there had been only the one. 

"Because there is literally nowhere else in the whole world that I need to be more tonight than right here, with you."

And giving back a grin to keep the chill from stinging his eyes to water, Bucky tucked their knotted hands together into his pocket so the tracks they'd leave behind them would be just a little bit closer as they went.


End file.
